


a question of needs (and not rosary beads)

by seventymilestobabylon



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, Sex in a Tavern
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 01:25:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15232302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventymilestobabylon/pseuds/seventymilestobabylon
Summary: Thomas wants to maybe bang in the private room at the tavern. James feels weird about it.





	a question of needs (and not rosary beads)

**Author's Note:**

> I am writing a longer Black Sails fic from Miranda's POV but right now it is requiring research on fairly dry procedural matters and like, intellectual history (ugh)--so I decided to take a break from that and write some anxious, awkward 1705 tavern sex instead. Enjoy!

He is trying to remember if he has ever been in a private room of a tavern before. Not for any appreciable length of time, certainly. Thomas has said _not to be disturbed_ to the tavernkeeper. His tone is very final. The voice of a lord. James cannot recall when he last felt so distant from Thomas, so unknowable by him.

When the door shuts, Thomas turns around with the smile that James recognizes. “It feels an age since we—what?”

“What?” says James. He sounds defensive, even to his own ears.

“You look like you’re preparing to be boarded.”

James can’t tell, looking at Thomas, if this is meant to be a dirty joke. “Well,” he says, “I’m not.”

Thomas accepts this and settles himself onto the upholstered bench, at a distance from James that would be entirely defensible for a person who was only a friend. It would be, in fact, difficult to make the case for anything but friendship, at that distance. James’s shoulders relax a little. “You needn’t have waited,” Thomas says.

“To eat?” says James.

“That, too,” says Thomas, his eyes mischievously full of a meaning that James—unkindly—turns away from.

The food is simple, compared to what James has come to expect from the Hamiltons’ taste. Mutton and oysters, and cauliflower cooked in cream. He considers making a joke about it, but he has found that Thomas is easily injured by jokes of that sort: one of many things he finds difficult to understand about Thomas.

They eat in silence. Growing up in uncertainty of where his next meal would come from, James is prone to eating too fast, and it requires a degree of concentration to put food in his mouth at a civilized speed. Thomas—Miranda says that he was taught not to speak until spoken to, at meals, and that it requires an effort of will, even now, for him to do otherwise. His silence at a mealtime means his trust. That’s what Miranda says.

Still: James wants to talk. If Thomas means this to be—what it is, what it clearly is, then he should have the fucking decency to say something about it. He also, and intensely, wants the whole business to be transacted without any conversation, but he knows better than to hope for that. Thomas is not capable of it, that implicit understanding. Even when he kissed James—

Thomas’s thumb very light at the hinge of his jaw. He felt a thrill like fear, when it happened.

Even then, Thomas said, “All right?” when it was over, and would have said more, except that James nodded mutely, minutely, and stammered something incoherent that required his presence elsewhere. Thomas and Miranda both looked hideously understanding about it, and James considered—as he walked home through ill-lit streets and inhaled familiar smells of smoke and fish and tar and shit—simply climbing aboard one of the ships in harbor and never returning to London.

Still. Knowing who Thomas is and what he should expect from him, James is still not prepared for Thomas to suck gravy off his thumb with a sound all the more obscene for being obviously uncalculated, and to catch James’s eye on him, and to smile and say, “I was beginning to think you only wanted supper.”

“That isn’t—” James begins.

There is laughter in Thomas’s face. It’s fucking unendurable. As if James doesn’t know, as if James has never sucked a cock before and doesn’t know how to go about getting started.

“Let’s get on with it, then,” he says, instead of whatever stupid fucking revealing thing he was going to say, and he pushes Thomas back against the shabby plush seat and unthreads his steinkirk from the buttonhole of his coat. His fingers are not gentle. (They are rough; they are not shaking.)

Thomas dips his chin and angles his face to be kissed. James ignores him, fumbling with twists of linen, shoving one side of Thomas’s red coat off his shoulder.

“James,” Thomas says. He is not touching James. One hand rests on the table, lordly confident; the other is at his side.

“Can we not get on with it,” James says unevenly.

(Thomas’s fingers barely, barely touching him, that night. Like a breath, the touch of fingers against his neck. A thumb on the hinge of his jaw. Thomas’s _mouth._ )

“You’re—Jesus. James. Stop.”

If he stops, he won’t begin again.

But he stops. He retreats to that safe distance, that friendly distance, to his half-empty plate. He doesn’t look at Thomas. His breathing is noisy, and he makes an effort to quiet it. Terror and desire sit very close together, he thinks. Both shame him badly. He doesn’t look at Thomas.

Thomas sighs—a terrible noise, that sigh. The familiar impulse to be away, not to be caged in like this, washes over James, and he glances so sharply at the door that Thomas notices and says, “For God’s sake. I’m not—what do you _think_ of me?” with a sudden, piercing twist of misery in his voice.

James doesn’t look at him. What would he say? What would he find in Thomas’s eyes? Finally, he says, “You aren’t the first, if that’s what you imagine.” He can hear the ugliness in his voice. What he wants is for Thomas to lash out at him, so that he can storm out and be finished with this fucking charade.

But he makes the mistake of looking up, and two things catch him: The creases at the corners of Thomas’s closed eyes. The gun fired true then; James has hurt him, as he intended, made cheap a thing that Thomas held dear. That is the first thing.

The second thing is that Thomas’s hand is on the table, and he is, restlessly, drawing the pad of his index finger very lightly across the edge of it. Back and forth. James is hypnotized by the motion. He has not been able to stop thinking of those fingers touching him. Thomas’s mouth was gentle and slow, and he has not been able to stop thinking of that, either.

As if it is the next salvo in an argument they are both having, James says harshly, “What the fuck did you bring me here for, then?”

Thomas’s eyes come open, and his head jerks sharply around to look at James. “For dinner,” he says. “Not whatever the f—the _fuck_ you think I—” The oath doesn’t come naturally to him. He has to try it twice.

James feels a swell of affection, and then that familiar burst of fear-desire-escape. He swallows all of it down.

“What did you come here for,” Thomas says softly.

“For you,” says James. He looks down at his hands, and finds that he has clenched them into fists without noticing. Effortfully, he relaxes his fingers.

Thomas reaches out slowly, rests two knuckles under James’s chin, and tips his head up. “If you thought that I would take something from you, _ever,_ that you didn’t want me to—”

“No,” James says. He puts his hand into Thomas’s, folds it into the curve of Thomas’s palm, and feels Thomas squeeze hard.

“What I mean,” says Thomas, a little steadier in himself now, “is that there isn’t anything to ‘get on with,’ except what you want. If I’d wanted to get my—” He makes a vague, awkward gesture in the direction of his breeches, which James cannot help but be charmed by.

“I know,” says James, though he doesn’t, really.

“Do you?” Thomas is visibly exasperated.

“I said I do!”

“I’d have picked someone more _agreeable,_ for one thing!” It’s a small explosion, and James can’t help laughing, and then he can’t _stop_ laughing, because Thomas has caught it too. For a minute it’s as easy as that, two men laughing at a shared joke, but James wants, has wanted, more than that. When he moves closer to Thomas, careful and deliberate, they both stop laughing, and Thomas’s face is stripped down immediately to raw hunger.

“I’ve never,” James tries to explain. He doesn’t know what he means. He’s brought men pleasure before, and spent in their hands and mouths, but it has been for the sake of convenience. Never before has a man looked at him the way Thomas looks at him. Never before has he been touched with careful, curious fingers and a gentle, exploratory mouth. He has been interchangeable, and Thomas is interchangeable with nobody else James has ever met or will ever meet.

Thomas is looking at his mouth. When he notices that James has noticed, it takes long, agonizing seconds for him to drag his eyes up to James’s.

“Have you, before?” James asks.

“Yes.” This so steadily that it hurts.

“At Eton,” says James.

Thomas’s eyelashes come down, and he says, “Yes. And—”

James doesn’t want there to be an _and._ “Gardeners and stableboys, I suppose, in Dorset.” He knows he is being a brute; better that than—

He doesn’t know what. Other things.

“Nobody in Dorset. Christ. Not anybody who can’t—look.” Thomas pulls away from James, shrugs his shoulder to bring his jacket back into alignment. “I don’t know what I’ve done to—whatever this is, but I’m sorry, all right? Whatever it is, I’m very very sorry.”

He makes to get to his feet, and James puts out a hand to catch his wrist. He thinks idiotically that there is something fundamentally wrong and false about it: A sailor daring to touch the hem of an earl’s son’s garment. Fingers rough from ropes and hot metal, resting on a lace cuff that must have cost more than James earned in a year when he first went to sea. But it works. Thomas doesn’t go.

James opens his mouth to speak, and finds that he can’t say anything. Instead, he brings Thomas’s hand to his face. He has not been able to stop thinking about the way it felt, the first time. He expects Thomas to pull away, which he would deserve, but Thomas lets out a small, unhappy breath and wets his lips and shapes his hand against the curve of James’s neck. His thumb—God, God, God—slides down the length of James’s cheek and brushes across his lips. James is trying not to shiver. He is shivering.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas whispers, still not looking up, and he tips his head forward slowly, slowly, to rest on James’s shoulder, the bridge of his nose pressed against James’s collarbone.

“No,” says James. He touches the back of Thomas’s neck, sliding his fingers past coat and wig and the loosened cloth of his steinkirk, to rub the warm skin at the base of his hairline. Thomas makes a sound like a contented animal and tightens his grip on James’s neck, and it is—not disastrous, being held this way, but it is more deliberate and intentional than what he had imagined. _Tender,_ he thinks, and he cannot bear tenderness as a way for Thomas to treat him, but he also cannot bear the idea that anyone, at Eton or in Dorset or on Thomas’s Grand Tour or _anywhere,_ might ever have touched Thomas any other way. He can feel Thomas’s breath on his skin; he feels desperately protective.

Carefully, he ducks his head to touch Thomas’s lips with his. His mind is raucous with fond and foolish thoughts, and he is shivering a little, and it is nothing else than a kiss that he has chosen when he might have chosen otherwise and Thomas’s mouth is warm and his lips are wet and the rhythm of the thing is like the first kisses James ever shared with a girl, neither of them sure what to do. Just lips touching, and sliding apart, and touching again. Perhaps it won’t be any good, after all the painful slowness and thoughts of tenderness and nights he’s made himself spend with the thought of Thomas’s thumb against his jaw, perhaps it will be best if they just—

“Can I,” Thomas whispers.

“Yes,” James says, resigned to going through with it even if—and then he chokes out a breath like a sob and catches at fistfuls of Thomas’s jacket as Thomas’s mouth—Jesus, _Jesus,_ his wet and wicked mouth trails hotly over James’s jawline and up and up, his tongue tracing the shape of an ear which feels so fucking intimate that James gasps; sliding back down James’s neck, Thomas _bites_ at the place where his thumb touched that night that one night and James could not shake free of it, and James feels Thomas smile against his skin.

They draw apart, just enough. Thomas says, “I think of you often,” which is simple or should be simple, but something about the way Thomas says it is achingly erotic, as if he is letting James in on a particularly salacious secret.

“Yes,” James says, trying to catch his breath. “I—yes. Get this off. I want to—here.” Thomas does not smile at his incoherence. They are fumbling with each other’s cravats, and James reminds himself that the cheap linen is Navy issue and therefore not—not—it doesn’t mean anything about him, compared to the Holland stuff Thomas buys that doesn’t—it doesn’t _fucking matter,_ because what matters, what desperately and vitally matters is getting his mouth on Thomas’s throat, and when he does it reduces Thomas to near incoherence, just soft, hungry noises far enough back in his throat that James can feel the vibration of them in his lips and tongue; and long sure fingers in James’s hair, pressing in at the back of his queue, drawing his face up to Thomas’s to be kissed.

And _then_ it is kissing the way James has imagined it, hungry and so deep their teeth clack together and Thomas draws away to say sorry and James pushes forward into his space to kiss the apology from his mouth. He straddles Thomas’s hips to get better purchase on his shoulders, and Thomas brings his arms up, lines of warmth up James’s back and shoulder blades, closing him in and Thomas’s hands are in his hair and Thomas’s tongue is in his mouth, which is—

Which—

He tosses Thomas’s wig aside and pulls Thomas closer, although they are already as close as two people can be. He wants to be close; he wants to kiss and touch and be held and tease Thomas with his tongue and his teeth; he wants them to break apart gasping and he wants to take Thomas’s mouth again before Thomas has quite caught his breath, so that he can feel Thomas shudder and jerk against him. There are so many things he wants: this, everything.

“Take this off,” says Thomas, thickly, into James’s mouth. “For God’s sake—” shoving so haphazardly at James’s coat that he can’t help laughing. James tries to help, wriggling slightly to escape from the heavy cloth, which motion causes Thomas’s head to fall back with a hard, overwhelmed _thunk_ against the wood paneling.

“Then perhaps you should have undressed me _first,_ ” James says, playing at annoyance. Thomas opens his eyes and smiles sweetly at him.

“Next time,” he says. “Hold still, you ruffian.”

James helps by undoing his belt and then can’t think what to do with it; Thomas is occupied with waistcoat buttons and can’t contribute. After a moment’s hesitation, he says, “Er,” and Thomas notices.

“Just—on the floor, for heaven’s sake, I won’t _step_ on it,” Thomas says, where follows an interlude of imperfect choreography to do with the belt and the sword and James’s waistcoat and Thomas’s jacket and the plates they never finished; which is satisfactory insofar as it ends with the sword disposed of and James’s jacket and waistcoat carefully folded on top of the strewn-about mess of Thomas’s steinkirk and jacket, and the plates and table pushed back to a safe distance, and most of all with kissing Thomas’s laughing mouth hard enough to silence him, hard enough that Thomas clutches at James’s shoulders with bruising fingers.

Thomas has a hand under James’s shirt, and the way it feels is—the way it feels is _extraordinary,_ out of all proportion to what is happening, or maybe what is extraordinary is not the touch itself but the combination of Thomas’s clever fingers rubbing at a nipple with such particular intent and the helpless jerks of Thomas’s hips that show how badly _he_ wants this. James rocks into him hungrily, fingers trembling over waistcoat buttons because he has seen Thomas without a jacket but he has never, he has never—

“You’re so lovely,” Thomas whispers, kissing at any part of James’s down-turned face he can reach. “You—God—James—”

“Fuck,” says James, as the waistcoat snags on Thomas’s belt and won’t come off. “Just fuck this fucking—” and they are kissing again, with enough force to snap James’s head back if Thomas had not been cradling it in a long-fingered hand. Their hands clash and tangle on Thomas’s belt. James swears viciously over it, which makes Thomas smile and take his mouth to the hollow above James’s collarbone, where he licks and sucks until James is arching helplessly into him.

“If you want me to—” he gasps.

“I do,” says Thomas. His own fingers are very sure, undoing the buttons of James’s breeches and reaching a hand inside his drawers.

James chokes out an “Oh” and drops his head to Thomas’s shoulder, shaking too hard to do anything else, even to think of what else might be desirable to do. There is only this: Thomas warm and hard under him, Thomas’s hand between his legs, the thin layer of cloth between Thomas’s skin and James’s mouth.

“There,” Thomas says. He kisses James’s shoulder, bare where his shirt has slid to one side, and the pads of his fingers slide over the underside of James’s prick before circling it with intent. “James, you—let me just—let me—”

The pleasure of it coils at the base of his spine and washes up and out in shuddery, consuming waves. James intends better for Thomas; he intends—reciprocity, anything, but all he can do is rut into Thomas’s loose fist and suck hot messy kisses across the pieces of Thomas he can reach—his shoulder, the side of his neck, his earlobe—while Thomas says his name and _dear heart_ and strokes him and says _James, James, James._

“I—my—I’ll—your clothes, if, if,” he manages.

“I don’t,” says Thomas very tenderly, “give a fuck,” and his hand twists just so, and James buries his face against Thomas’s neck as he comes. 

After—really almost immediately after—he feels ridiculous, and messy, and ashamed. He has good reasons for—for managing his life the way he has up to this point. He is sprawled on top of Thomas like a whore trying to lure a tourist into her bed and his shirt has fallen down over one shoulder, and Thomas is—they never managed to deal with the belt, and his waistcoat is folded unevenly down over it and James has spent on it and on Thomas’s breeches, a sticky, telltale mess. He says “I can—” and jolts backwards rabbit-quick, so that he knocks into the table and upsets their carefully set-aside plates, spilling cauliflower and oyster all over the floor and his shoes.

“Fuck,” he says, staring down at the mess. “I—fuck, fuck.” He does up his breeches, miserably.

“James,” says Thomas.

He can’t look at Thomas. Thomas’s face will be—Thomas will pity him. “I’ll still suck you,” he says, forcing his voice under control, “but we may have to find another venue.”

“All right,” Thomas says mildly. “Can you help me with this, first?”

He is unbuckling his belt.

“What are you doing?” says James.

“I have to start over,” Thomas says. “It’s the way the waistcoat works. It isn’t the same as yours, I have a valet. Anyway we’ve spilled cauliflower on it, so it’ll have to be cleaned. Can you take this?”

It is _clearly_ not cauliflower, but James steps over the spilled food and plates and his own belt and sword, and takes the belt that Thomas hands him. Impatiently, Thomas looks up at him and says, “Sit down, you’re making my neck hurt.”

The waistcoat unbuttons down the front, and James has realized that Thomas is trying to—to do something to James for which needing help with his clothes was subterfuge. He doesn’t know what the thing is. After all: “I’ve already said I’ll—” He waves at Thomas’s lap.

Thomas tosses his waistcoat aside, onto the pile of clothes they’ve already made, then reached over and folds it so that the stains are on the inside. Stripped down to his shirt, collar, and cuffs, he puts his head on one side to look at James. “Alluring though it is to be—” He is a little sharp. “—solicited in that kind by a man who looks like he is preparing for the gallows, I’d rather just—will you sit with me a little while?”

James swallows, and nods. He thinks that it is exactly like Thomas to refuse the natural and easy next step in favor of something tangled-up and messy and nonsensical. Whatever it might be like for him, he could have _understood_ going on his knees between Thomas’s legs, the justice of kneeling in the food he spilled while he uses his mouth to bring Thomas off. But Thomas puts his arm through James’s, laces their fingers together, and says nothing for a very long time. As if he wants nothing else. As if he expects nothing else.

Several unendurable minutes later, James ventures, “Er—is this what you—”

“You make yourself very unhappy,” Thomas says, talking over him, “and I can’t see any good reason for it.”

“I think you have an—not a clear idea of the role of happiness in a man’s life.”

“What I find curious is that you do, actually, want me.”

James looks away. It is very baldly stated.

“But only if—I don’t know what. I don’t know what changed, then to now. I didn’t mean to—” Thomas’s voice catches, just a little, just enough to make James feel like a brute again. “To end with you feeling the way you look.”

“What way do I look?” says James, more combative than he intended.

Thomas’s hand tightens. “Like you want to get it over with. Like you despise me for being someone that you want. I don’t know what it feels like for you, but it’s—I feel I’ve done something I shouldn’t have.”

“You haven’t.”

“I know.” A few minutes tick by, and an idea strikes Thomas. “To you,” he says, “and not with you. That’s how it feels.”

Wearily, James slides down a little in his seat and rests his head on Thomas’s shoulder, and Thomas rests his own head on James’s. James says, “You are the strangest person I think I’ve ever known.”

“Yes, yes,” says Thomas.

“Miranda apart.”

“She is very singular.”

“Though not so singular as to have me in the back room of a tavern and not allow me to reciprocate.” He worries that this will be too much, but Thomas chuckles.

A few minutes later, James says, “I do want you.” He is surprised at how difficult the words are to say, the pure honesty of them.

Thomas lets out a sharp, ragged breath. Then: “I know that, dear heart.”

“I don’t know why—” Rather than finish the sentence—with what, anyway?—James turns his face into Thomas’s broad chest, his forehead against skin, his mouth against fabric. What he feels is not containable. Nothing he can give words to but real, somehow, nevertheless.

“It’s all right,” Thomas murmurs into his hair, terribly gentle. “Oh, love. It’s all right.”

They clean themselves up, eventually, and get dressed again and leave, which one can do evidently when one is a lord, leave things in a mess and let somebody else have the bother of putting it to rights. And Thomas does not ask if James wishes to be dropped off at his own lodgings, and James does not raise the question either but follows Thomas into the Hamiltons’ house and up the stairs to Thomas’s bedroom as if the house and the room and Thomas are all his own particular and much-loved property.


End file.
